Audio Player/Recorder VITO SoundExplorer 1.6 Released

http://vitotechnology.com/en/products/soundexplorer.html

VITO SoundExplorer, an advanced sound recorder/player for the Pocket PC platform, has some unique features that are worth paying attention to. First, its MP3 recording capabilities are unique, as far as WM5-compliance is concerned (Alexander Zavorine's NoteM, the other quality MP3 recorder, isn't WM5-compatible and the other quality MP3 recoder, 40th Floor's iPlay isn't the best for pure recording purposes, let alone its being unavailable in a lot of areas in the world. Resco Audio Recorder records into MP3 at a very bad quality and, therefore, is not recommended for quality MP3 recordings.) Also, its indexing capabilities, which are really good, are worth mentioning. Second, as a MP3 player, it has some nice tricks like faster/slower playback, even with a locked pitch. (Unfortunately, the later only works with playing back at half the speed.) I've thoroughly tested the new version to find out whether the bugs of the earlier versions pointed out in my big roundup of Pocket PC sound recorders have been fixed. Some of them have indeed been fixed; unfortunately, the application still has some CPU utilization problems. The higher the CPU utilization, the lower the battery life. For example, with an application that consumes around 23-24% CPU (NoteM in 56 kbps MP3 recording mode) time, it's possible to record about 7 hours without recharging the battery on an iPAQ 2210. With an application that uses around 50%-60% CPU (for example, Resco Audio Recorder recording to Speex), this time will be drastically reduced to around 4 hours. Therefore, if you want great battery life (want to make long recordings without having access to chargers), knowing the CPU utilization of applications is a must so that you can also take battery life into account when picking your sound recording application. (Please read the sound recorder roundup for a more thorough explanation of the old bugs - as it has already been discussed in the linked article, I won't elaborate on them here. Note that it's there that I've elaborated on the other aspects of the application - for example, ADPCM support. Here, I only speak aout the changes / the new benchmark results of the latest version, not generic capability questions.) Quantitive CPU usage results As far as the very high CPU usage of the Today plug-in is concerned, which was one of the most painful issues in earlier versions: it has been fixed (by, for example, not fine-scrolling the 'Tap here to start SoundExplorer' any more). In earlier versions, the CPU usage of the Today plug-in, without actively recording/playing anything, was around 50%; now, it fluctuates between 0 and 17%. (Note that evgerything was measured on a 400 MHz PXA255 WM2003 iPAQ 2210.) This means you won't need to disable the ViTO SE Today plug-in at once, right after installing it. On the contrary – as you'll see, recording/playing straight from the Today plug-in, instead of the application itself, may help in saving battery life. First, the CPU usage while recording to quality (44 kHz) MP3 is around 46% (without Voice Activation System – VAS for short), which is considerably worse than recording into MP3's with NoteM but a bit better than recording into high-quality Speex files with Resco Audio Recorder. After switching on VAS, the CPU utilization raises over 85% while thesound input is lower than the VAS threshold and to around 72% while it's actively recording. The fact that, with enabled VAS, the bottom program bar icons are constantly redrawn may also mean the application engine has a very nasty, WM2003+-related bug (VAS doesn't consume almost any additional CPU under PPC2k/PPC2k2). When, with VAS enabled, the recording is made using the Today plug-in (that is, not from inside SoundExplorer), the VAS consumes about 73-74% CPU time while it's waiting for input and 37-44% otherwise with 64 kbps and 52-53% with 96 kbps inputs. Then, no excessive, buggy redraws take place. Using the Today plug-in is also nice to be used instead of the main application itself because the "Today plug-in consumes less CPU than the application" rule is true with playing too. I've tested the CPU usage of the application and the Today plug-in with three different MP3's and got the following results (in-application CPU utilization comes first and then, Today plug-in-based ones follow): 44k/96 kbps, mono MP3 (recorded with ViTO SE): 58% / 32% 44k/64 kbps, mono MP3 (recorded with ViTO SE): 36% / 27% 44k/192k, stereo MP3: 45%/ 38% As can be seen, to play music, it's highly advisable to use the Today plug-in and not the application itself. Finally, I've also measured the additional CPU load of the equalizer (which causes around 7% additional CPU load) and the "DSP" Booster / "Noise" (dynamic expansion like the analogue noise reduction algorithm DNL used in cassette players in the 70's) / dynamic limiter. It's between 8-15% with all the three "DSP" routines. (Note that this functionality shouldn't really be called DSP because DSP functioanlity is much more than simple dynamic compression, boosting or expansion. Incidentally, this is why I've used the " marks. If you want to see some really cool DSP effects, have a look at for example iPlay – if you can access its site from your browser, that is.) Verdict: if you have a WM5 device and you need a decent, high-quality MP3 recorder but don't necessarily want to use VAS, go for this application. Pre-WM5 users may also want to give a try to NoteM for quality MP3 recording capabilities. As far as using it as a MP3 player is concerned: there're other players (for example, the infamous TCPMP) that consume way less CPU time (and, therefore, battery). However, the ViTO app doesn't consume too much CPU time either if used strictly from the Today screen - therefore, it can be a worthy alternative to other MP3 players too. (Please note that I'll publish a big MP3 player roundup sometime, along with CPU usage measurements.) EDIT (Jan 27, 2006): I've thoroughly tested NoteM under WM5 in the meantime; it's working (almost) flawlessly, along with almost all the "legacy" Pocket PC sound recorders. Please read the roundup of Pocket PC sound recorders for more information on WM5 compatibility.